Why intrapersonal skills matter more than interpersonal skills?

We often think that the person with the most professional skills or technical knowledge will get promoted fastest and achieve the best work results. But is this really the case?

When we face work-related pressures or come into contact with possible stress triggers it isn't a lack of professional skills that stop us.

What truly stops us is: 

• Our inner reactions to outside situations, like disappointment, fear, anger, worrying, feeling sorry for ourselves, etc. Failure to deal with the negative within our mind will sooner or later lead to a lack of inner motivation and personal initiative;
• Daydreaming and constant ‘monkey mind’ prevent us from focusing. This can easily lead to thinking of non-work-related thoughts that can go on for a long time before we find focus again;
• Small and often unnoticed mental health issues like feeling stressed. Stress can easily turn into chronic stress and from there to (employee) burnout, anxiety or depression, or even more serious mental health problems.

What do these things have in common?

They are all caused by a lack of intrapersonal skills (click to see what is the most important intrapersonal skill) – a lack of our ability to use our awareness when we deal with our own intrapersonal processes.
 

INTRAPERSONAL AND INTERPERSONAL SKILLS ARE INTERLINKED

What is the usual approach in case of those problems?

Trying to eliminate the stressors around us. This often can produce many problems as employees try avoiding certain unpleasant work situations, often restricting the full use of their professional skills.

Intrapersonal and interpersonal skills are interconnected, when we fail to take initiative, are reactive and avoid situations, relations between people become toxic and unsustainable. And vise versa when we keep our calm, we can get along with others.

Does this sound familiar? Did you read about it in our previous newsletter?

As we pointed out, the outside stressors don't cause stress when you learn how to stop the triggers that fire a reaction within your own mind.

Until employers teach their employees how to become aware of their own inner processes and lead those processes with ease, employees will keep falling into the trap and thus lose the ability to use their professional skills to their fullest. What is a stressor matter here less than what is triggered with stressors in your mind.

THE NATURE OF WORK IS CHANGING

Why intrapersonal skills matter?

We see that in the next 3 to 10 years intrapersonal skills will become a top factor in all workplaces. Handling difficult situations will become the most important factor in hiring and promoting decisions.

What makes this change inevitable is the ongoing large-scale automation. Up until now, we have had a lot of routine jobs where we can train our subconscious ‘automation’ (our reflexes) to take over and thus subconsciously manage such simple processes relatively well. However, in modern workplaces, all the ‘automatic’ routine jobs will be automated, and thus programs, AI, and robots will take over those jobs as machines/computers work faster and are less error-prone than humans who make mistakes when they become tired. Israeli historian and best-selling author Yuval Noah Harari has been writing and talking on this subject for a while now.

We agree with him and see that most modern well-paid jobs demand creativity, access to insight, and the ability to hold laser-sharp focus as we need to solve even more complicated technical tasks than we have been working with so far.

So gunning for the next promotion is not anymore only about learning more professional skills, instead, it demands to demonstrate the ability to apply intrapersonal skills in different situations. Such skills show your true intelligence and ability to innovate.
 

SELF-LEADERSHIP UNDER EXTERNAL PRESSURE IS VITAL

As you take on more responsibilities and need to speed up your work and handle a growing complexity of work tasks simultaneously, so does the pressure and demands on you. That means staying calm, keeping your focus, and getting rid of ‘automatic’ internal reactions as false instincts that make you behave impulsively in every perceived crisis situation that pops up. 

You need to notice when your stress level starts to increase so that you can learn activities that enable you to nip burnout and the first signs of mental health problems in the bud. What this demands is training your mind like you train your physical body – in a systematic way. 

That is exactly why we have developed the world’s first fully digital mental wellness gym for you and your team. It is accessible where ever and whenever you(r employees) need it. You are welcome to try it now.
 

Your partners, teammates, and leaders expect you to be able to handle very complicated situations calmly and productively. But what are the steps to get there?
 

PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY AND TEAMWORK

Instead of fearing criticism and rebuke, you need to create a work environment where people can speak their ideas freely, discuss them with other teammates and take the initiative to try something new even when they meet constructive criticism to their initial ideas. 

Without execution ideas are worthless

Execution always comes down to personal responsibility and excellent teamwork. A journey to developing a practical and enjoyable service or high-quality product is often demanding and will become in the future even more demanding as technology and programming become more and more advanced. 

What this means is we will face more failure and setbacks. However, failure is permanent only you give up your responsibility to find a solution. Even the Wellness Orbit team has faced its setbacks and failures, what drives us forward is teaching intrapersonal education. We always focus on what to do next, even when we face a dead-end or difficult complication. And we manage to do it without any stress load that prevents us from working.

When employees take personal responsibility there always is a solution, no matter how difficult the situation and external pressure.

You can't always avoid errors when you develop something that has never been done before (like in our case, a fully digital mental wellness gym), but you can observe the problematic external situation objectively and fix problems ASAP until you arrive at the solution that you planned in the first place.

CONCLUSION

Learning intrapersonal skills is the most sustainable pathway to handling setbacks and failures and finding creative new solutions. 

When everyone in your team understands their inner domain a bit better, they can also be more positive, vital and bring you more profit.

Furthermore, intrapersonal and interpersonal skills have a direct linkage. Only when people are able to deal with their inner processes first, we can get rid of the kindergarten mentality and naturally see more personal initiative and well-handled relations. This has the power to enhance teamwork and improve customer relations.